from the funny-how-that-works dept

Four years ago, as the debate over copyright extension was going on in the UK, some people noticed that a petition from "artists" that was sent to the government had a bunch of signatures from artists who were dead. Apparently, they wanted copyright protection from beyond the grave. That worked so well in the UK, that it's apparently been expanded to all of Europe. We recently noted that the pro-stronger copyright Gallo Report was approved by the EU Parliament, but now some are noticing that the petitions in favor of it, once again, appear to have included at least one dead filmmaker. Separately, some noticed that the signatures appeared to include a disproportionate number of Hungarians, so Amelia Andersdotter decided to contact a few of the Hungarian filmmakers listed as having signed the document, and they told her they never signed any such thing. Other petitions show similar oddities, including content creators who have come out in favor of file sharing and those not even in the EU. From the looks of things, there's at least a pretty strong appearance of various industry groups simply signing the names of a long list of filmmakers and musicians to pad the listings...

Is it possible that some performance rights organizations have a membership clause that allows them to sign petitions on your behalf? Or that they act as though they do? Even copyleft artists are often still members, especially those who have only recently discovered the other half of the copyright debate. The dead artists could then come down to poor record keeping in their lists, and sloppy administration like that seems right up the alley of most PROs.

Re:

I wonder if dead people can create petitions too. Or maybe someone can write a petition on behalf of a dead person. It could be the petition that would be a petition that the dead person would start if s/he had been alive.

Perhaps then dead people could get their dead friends to sign it. They can start a dead persons lobby. What would it be called? The American Association of Dead Persons (AADP)?

oh so hollywood can sign anmyones name now?

I don't know any of the legal stuff behind it, so I could be wrong... but isn't signing someone else's name on a legal petition, without notifying them or asking for their approval, some sort of legal or identity fraud? If so, this could horribly backfire in a heartbeat.

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If this is found to be true, what TechDirt thinks that they were doing? It is a CRIME to falsify documents given to the government, so these organizations might be cruising for a big old criminal bruising.

Speaking facetiously, though, shouldn't someone in Europe take said industry groups to court for - among other things - bringing the institution of petitioning governments for redress, into disrepute? Shouldn't someone in Europe take the various governments to court for bringing themselves into disrepute?

Time for a Business Model patent

Petition Preparation and Presentation 101:

1. Get listing of all 'living impaired' residing in graveyard.
2. Stand in middle of graveyard and announce, I'm filling out a petition for XXX, anyone residing in these premises who doesn't want to be included as a signor on the petition, please speak up now, or notify me after the reading.
3. Read petition and ask for any objections.
4. Sell 'completed' petition to organization wanting bogus results/response/etc.
5. Profit....

Humanity

copyright

I have also some articles that was being copied by strangers in the net but I can't sue them because they are far country and if I will sue them in court it takes months or years and money and not sure also if it can be prosecuted so in short it so hard really handle like that situation.